


Imminently Deceased

by blackSparrow



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Mind Control, Psychic Abilities, Sadstuck, The Revenge Cycle, make her pay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 13:27:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1146538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackSparrow/pseuds/blackSparrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are Sollux Captor, and you hear the voices of the imminently deceased. You're kind of okay with it. Or at least you've gotten used to it.</p><p>Then, you hear her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Imminently Deceased

You’ve gotten used to hearing the voices of the imminently deceased.

It’s practically a game between you and Aradia. When you start hearing a new voice, you describe it and what they’re saying, and the two of you try to guess the upcoming method of death. Then, once they’re gone from your head, they’re in hers. She listens to them and finds out which one of you came closest. You’re usually right, but only because you tend to fall back on good old-fashioned culling and, let’s face it, that’s how a lot of trolls die.

Point is, the voices don’t faze you much. They’re just there, like your feet or your horns. Their screams get loud and irritating sometimes, but that’s just part of your fucked up life. You don’t know why they bother to beg you for help or scream curses at you, because it’s not like you have anything to do with their deaths. All you do is sit in your hive and program shitty viruses all day.

Besides, it’s not like it would make a difference anyway. You tried, once, when you realized one voice you heard was another young troll in your hive stem who was about to lose a strife with her lusus. You warned her and she stayed away from her lusus for a while. Said lusus nearly starved because of it and killed her in a fit of hunger-driven anger.

So yeah. You were pretty much forced to accept that once you start hearing a voice, they’ll die. That’s just how it works. You don’t hear the voices of the imminently-deceased-oh-wait-just-kidding-they’re-fine.

_“Help me help me help me!”_

Get up in the morning.

_“Why would you do this to me?! WHY?!”_

Program for a couple hours.

_“Oh god it hurts; someone please make it stop!”_

Feed your lusus after a drawn-out psionic strife.

_“I can’t breathe!”_

Troll KK. Get in a fight. Assure him that, yeah, dumbass, you’re still friends. 

_“I’m so scared. Where’s my lusus?”_

Chat with AA, and set the next tomb-raiding outing. 

_“No, they’ll get me! Someone please help!”_

Go to your respiteblock and go to sleep.

This is your life. You’re used to it, and complaining about it just pisses other people off, so you deal. It’s not so bad, once you learn to tune them out. 

So you barely even realize it when you start hearing it.

_“Sollux??”_

You pause for a second in programming, wondering if you left Trollian voice-chat on or something, but a quick check reveals that you didn’t. You listen for it again, but don’t hear anything above the usual clamor in your head. 

With a shrug, you return to coding. KK’s started actually thinking he can code viruses lately, and you are going to stop at nothing to school his wriggler ass on what a real virus looks like.

_“Poor Tavros!”_

Your fingers stutter over the keys, and your digestion sac flips around. There was no mistaking the sound of a name you know.

A mounting sense of dread fills you, and you listen again. The usual chorus of screams bounces around your skull, but you can’t pick out the one you swear you just heard.

You close your coding program, because fuck it, and pull up Trollian. No voice channel is open to her… she’s online, though. You send a quick message.

twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling apocalypseArisen [AA]  
TA: hey AA?  
TA: have you been calliing me or 2omethiing?

You wait for a couple minutes but don’t get a response.

Oh right… wasn’t she supposed to be doing one of her FLARPing things today? She’s always pretty distracted whenever it’s a game day. That live action stuff is not really your thing, but you think it’s one of the cool things about her, how she can be pummeled by death day in and out and still smile and laugh and play silly wriggler games with Tavros. 

You’re kind of jealous of the twerp, to be honest. The way she talks about their campaigns, the two of them have a lot of fun together. You can’t have that kind of connection with her, because you’re too moody and bitter and awful to play silly little games for girls with her.

No, no. You’ve got the voices thing. That’s the sort of thing trolls who don't have your kind of powers could never understand. It’s just the two of you. 

Satisfied with that, you leave another message:

TA: hey, iim bored a2 fuck, 2o once youre done wiith your gamiing thiing, we 2hould go delviing.  
TA: talk two you later.

You leave Trollian open and stretch. You suppose you’ve been in your chair for most of the night… you should maybe get up and do something. Harvest some mind honey, maybe? Your stock is down to the last two jars, and you can’t afford to run out with a lusus like yours. Last time you let Bicyclopsdad go without his honey, he tore up half the hive stem with his psionics in a tantrum. It took a perigee before your neighbors stopped trying to break in and kill you.

Decided, you stand up and make your way across your room to your beehouse mainframes.

_“It’s time to pay, Vriska!”_

You stumble, landing heavily against one of the mainframes. Your hand is now smeared with honey, and the bees dance admonishments in beenary at you, but you ignore them. What. The fuck.

_“Sollux??”_

No.

No no no no no no….

Shaking, you push off from the beehouse and scramble back to your computer. Now the keys are sticky but you don’t give a shit. She’s still online. 

TA: AA, where are you?  
TA: come on, an2wer me.

No answer. At least, not from the chat client.

_“Tavros!”_

Oh god oh fuck oh god oh fuck no no…

What the voices say doesn’t always make sense. Their words aren’t chronological, and it’s not necessarily what they say out loud, and they can last in your head anywhere from a couple minutes to a couple days… however long the doomclock ticks. But you’re pretty sure they say things that they are thinking or saying right before they die.

And Aradia is saying your name.

TA: come on AA, ii really need two talk two you.  
TA: 2top fuckiing FLARPiing.  
TA: plea2e.

_“I’m sorry, Terezi. I can’t wait!”_

Can’t wait for _what_?

No, it doesn’t matter. You have to find her. You have to stop it. You’re going to go find her right now and stop… _whatever_ the fuck is going to happen.

You throw open your window, because fuck stairs, and have both hands on the windowsill, ready to hop out and fly straight for her hive before a feeling of _think again, dumbfuck_ crashes into you. You go cold as your lifetime of dealing with this shit rips away any misguided resolve you had and replaces it with something that feels an awful lot like despair.

You can’t stop it. You can never stop it. Once you start hearing someone's voice, they will die.

Your knees decide to give up before the rest of you, and you end up kneeling on the floor with your forehead pressed against the windowsill. An awful burning has started in your throat and eyes.

_“Sollux??”_

“Stop it,” you whisper to the wall.

_“Tavros, NO!”_

“He’s fine. I’m not hearing him. Whatever you’re doing, please _stop_.” You know it doesn’t matter. You know you can’t do anything. 

You curl up right there on the floor, clutching your head and wishing more than you have in sweeps that the voices would just _stop_. Why is this happening to you? What did you ever do to deserve this? What’s the point of knowing who will die if you can’t do a single thing to stop it? 

_“It’s time to pay, Vriska!”_

“Please,” you beg, rocking and wishing and trying your best not to cry, because she’s getting louder. They always get louder right before you stop hearing them at all. “Please, stop. You can't die. You can't, please no.”

You never fucking told her, because you’re too much of a coward and an asshole. And now it’s too late, and you want to save her but you can’t, she’s doomed and doomed is doomed.

_“I’m sorry, Terezi!”_

You’re never again going to play your voices game with her, or discover lost tombs, or hear her laugh, or see her oddly-creepy-but-endearing smile, or see her deep burgundy text, or… or anything. She’s about to leave you forever, and there’s not a goddamned thing you can do to stop it. You've never been so fucking _powerless_.

_“Sollux??”_

And then everything goes black.

When the world comes back, you’re disoriented. You’re not where you were a moment ago and your head suddenly hurts like a _bitch_.

You’re lying face-down on the ground, with a breeze rustling your hair and the cool sensation of grass under your palms. You spit out some grass and mud that got in your mouth. Then, you wince, because again, your head hurts like a bitch, and what was that weird sickeningly sweet, kinda buzzy taste…?

Oh no. You wouldn’t have. You do not, under any circumstances, eat the mind honey. 

Except this is what it feels like when you do, like you were slammed on the head two hundred times, and kind of psionically empty and overcharged at the same time, and no, why would you, _no_ , you know better, _no no no no_...

You look up, and you already know what you’re going to see. Devastation. Ruins.

Ruins that look an awful lot like Aradia’s hive.

_...no no nononononononononono..._

You stumble to your feet, despite the aches and new bruises that tell you that you fell from the sky at some point. Possibly after blasting her hive into rubble, because that’s totally what it looks like happened.

You take a halting step forward, then another, and another, and a sick, twisted part of you listens for the voice that tormented you only a little while ago. Because if you hear her, that means she’s still alive.

You spot her lusus’ head nearby, its body apparently disintegrated. You don’t see any sign of her, though.

Maybe she wasn’t here. Maybe she is out with Tavros or Terezi or _anywhere but here_. 

Bullshit. You are bullshitting yourself. Stop it.

You heard her voice. Now you don’t.

You were home. Now you’re here. You have no idea what happened.

Except there’s a half-empty jar of mind honey spilled onto the grass nearby, and there’s the head of Aradia’s lusus, and you can’t hear her voice anymore because once you stop hearing their voices that means they’re dead and _oh god_ you killed her you’re a _monster_ oh fuck oh god please no _you killed AA_ you piece of shit _you_ should be the dead one not her _oh fuck_ not her _anyone but her no no NO NO NO NO..._.

You fall to your knees and, for the first time in your life, the screams of the voices are drowned out by your own.


End file.
